Beauty in the World

Thursday, August 8, 2013

William has learned the word no pretty well. He uses it fairly often, but I'd say not as much as I thought he would. of course I may be speaking too soon...or typing...or thinking- whatever, you get the point. I can usually counteract that no by firmly saying yes, or I can start counting. Oddly enough the very first time I did the counting to 3 thing he reacted. Not quite sure why, but I'm not complaining. It works about 98% of the time.

Anyway, one of the things he just loves to say no to is cars passing me on the highway while we're heading home. I find this absolutely hilarious because it's just such a male thing. Sure females get into that competitive thing but for the most part it's really not that big of a deal. Well today he of course was telling other cars no and I said to him, "Sorry, honey, but I'm not going to drive like a bat outta hell just so other cars won't pass us." After that he began giving me kissy faces and blowing me kisses.

Another thing he likes to say no to is adult men. Should he be next to me or I'm holding him and a man gets too close he firmly tells them no. Also, at Sam's Club with my mom he was charming all the ladies by telling them hi but the first man they passed he yelled out no and shook his finger at him. Ah, William, he truly is the little protector (William means protector, in case you didn't know...or according to some sites, resolute protector, either way). And while it's cute, I do wonder how that behavior is going to evolve. While I'd be touched he'd be so protective of me, it can also mean a lot of bad. Like he would feel no one would be good enough for me and I'd be doomed to keep picking my son over a man who is actually a very good guy.

There's not much I can do about it, though. While he loves his Uncle and seems to really like my mother's husband and he loves my dad, he's only around two of them and doesn't have any other male interaction. I know you could say that's my fault, but if you met his father you'd understand why I've cut contact with him. I don't exactly have male friends. I don't really have many female friends either. So yeah, for right now I can't really do anything. I am thinking about getting him into the Big Brother program when he's old enough if I'm still single by then because I really want him to have a male role model.

Until then I'll just enjoy my competitive, over-protective little man.

First time he's said it! Obviously it wasn't that clear it was more
like yuff you but yeah. Made me so incredibly happy!! Felt really good
^_^

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

I know I haven't posted in forever, just been so busy, but I'd like to try again to keep this thing updated as often as possible.

William used to be a great eater but over the past several months he's become very picky, refusing to eat foods he used to love. He's gaining weight like he should but I know that's from all the milk he gets at night. I've been trying everything I can think of to get him to eat but none of it seemed to be working.

Well last night I figured I'd try hard not to give him milk every time he wanted it. Somehow he ended up going to bed without a bottle, which amazed me, but I think he was just that tired since it was well after 9pm.

During the night he only had one 5oz bottle of milk and then he woke up at 8:20am. When I finally decided to get up I tried to find him something to eat. Asked if he wanted eggs, he told me no (he can say no, now). Asked if he wanted yogurt, he said no. Looked around some more and saw some English muffins and asked if he wanted those and he grabbed for the bag. Bread and fruit is about all I can ever get him to eat.

So I made him and English muffin with butter and jam and he actually ate all of it. Well he ate one half then wanted out of his chair so I let him since one half is way more than he's eaten in a good while. He took the other half and set it on the kiddy table and played for a bit then came back for it and ate it.

Really happy he finally ate something. Hoping I can continue it for the rest of the day and from now on.

Monday, April 22, 2013

I haven't even written a letter to my son in a good while. Just so much has been going on that when I get any free time I prefer to read or watch something.

Well William certainly has the knack of walking. He's getting pretty good at running, too. Course, the snow and icy/slushy areas aren't the perfect running surface. Today I found he has pretty great eye/foot coordination. I took him outside to walk around for a bit and his uncle decided to come out and play with him (his uncle is his FAVORITE person in the world). His uncle grabbed a foam ball from the box of toys I keep at my sister's apartment for when William is over there while I visit or when I need to run grab something from somewhere and need to do it quick. Anyway, he brought the ball outside and put it on the ground and kicked it some. He kicked it to William and I told William to kick it, showing him how. Well he walked right up to it and kicked it square on. He did it several more times. No slips, no misses, right on every time. None of those times was the ball right there where just simply shifting his weight would have touched the ball. No, he had to walk up to it every time and there was no hesitation. The ball is also small enough that when I make the sign for ball (making a sphere with my hand, fingertips touching) the ball fits perfectly inside it.

His talking is getting much better. I was beginning to get worried because all these other children born around the same time were saying quite a few words. Then someone asked me the gender of all those babies and only one of them was a boy. They said boys blossom later than girls. So I waited and now he's really catching on.

I think I mentioned his first word was the name of the woman at the daycare he goes to. Then came mama. He has three different meanings for the sound ma-ma. One is me, another is food or I want and at the moment I can't remember the third one. Now he says uh-oh, get down, papa, ew, and several others that for some odd reason I just can't remember right now. Ew is the newest one. He says it for almost everything. He ALWAYS says it for diapers, even clean ones. He's also trying out the word dog and phrase good job. We've been watching Kipper on Netflix and in the theme song the word dog is say quite a bit and William loves dogs (though he's a bit skittish when they actually come up to him) so him trying to say dog is no surprise. Right now it's just the D sound, though. We only started watching Kipper two days ago.

The phrase, get down, comes from the daycare woman and me, my mom, my sister, my brother-in-law, pretty much every adult William comes into contact with. While I don't think he's as bad as I was when I was little about climbing on things, he's still climbing a lot. When I first heard him say it I was like, "What the heck are you saying?" He was very forceful in tone and his brow was furrowed as he said it so it really struck me. It just came out as something like, "dowa!" He was just sitting next to me watching something a movie. Then the next day he added a g' to the beginning so it became "g'dowa!" and he was standing on something so I realized what he was saying then. After that he'd say it every time he was on something he shouldn't be, pretty much telling on himself. Then we had to go to the doctor's to get his ear infection checked out and he was telling other kids to get down when he saw them sitting in the other chairs.

We're not sure if he's calling for my mom sometimes but he's been saying me-me while at her house. It's the only time I ever hear him say it and it almost always has something to do with her so we're beginning to wonder if that's his name for her, mimi. No idea where he's gotten it from. She refers to herself as nana and everyone else calls her that, too, to reinforce it.

My little man still likes to tease. I think it's a family trait from both sides. My niece has become extremely good at it. She's been doing it since she could talk, at least. With William I noticed it starting around 6 months. He was sitting in his high chair eating some goldfish (which some of you might think is crazy of me but my son has been nomming solid food since he was about 4 months and he initiated it, he's a very good eater when it comes to not choking). After a while he decided he was done and proceeded to just grab a handful and drop it on the floor. I fussed at him for it a few times. One of the times I was looking at him right after telling him to stop and he slowly reached down, picked up a single goldfish cracker, slowly brought his fist to his mouth, opened his mouth, closed it, then slowly moved his fist, still containing the cracker, over the side of the tray and dropped the thing. The whole time watching me.

The latest thing was he stuck his thumb into a potted plant at my mom's and got a little bit of dirt stuck to it. He held his hand up, finger splayed, in front of his mouth with the thumb pointing towards his mouth. He then smacked his lips, which is what he sometimes does to show he wants to eat something (if I make the noise by him he'll feed me something from his tray). He then brought his thumb as close to his lips as he could without touching then, a huge grin on his face, then just before it touched he drew it back real quick, laughing. He did it several more times, looking right at me. My mom and grandma were right there, too, so I wasn't just seeing something haha. You know, I think I only teased him a handful of times with bits of food, making like I was going to give him some but then ate it myself. Other than that I tend not to tease, not because I find it mean or anything, but just because my mind just doesn't exactly think that way. So all I can do is blame it on genes.

Well I'm going to stop there for now, it's somehow gotten to be 1am and I should get to bed.

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Yeah I'm still trying to eat better and all but I just haven't weighed myself in a while. Will post something about this next week.

But today I want to say that William said another word!!! Also, we think this sound he makes that sounds like it could be a slurring of "What's that?" really is, "What's that?" He usually makes that noise when pointing to something and then wants to inspect it. I blame the slurring of the words on me. I talk too fast -_-'

As for the word he said today, well it was Thomas. As in Thomas the train from that awesome show in the 90s (maybe late 80s, I'm not too sure). At Barnes and Noble he loves to play with the train set they have which has a bunch of the pieces to the Thomas set. Then at the Museum Without Walls (it's done by the Children's Museum and called Museum Without Walls because they don't have their own building so they just rent a space wherever they can each month and set up) he always goes back to the Thomas train set they have. My sister and I took him to a local toy store that has loads of really awesome toys. Like real toys that require some imagination to play with and are just so simple and fun. They had three tables set up, one of them with Thomas stuff on them so he played with that the whole time. I really wanted to buy him just Thomas but at first all I could find were pieces where it was a train and another car or a battery operated single piece, all of them $22. I did finally find a starter set with a simple oval track, railroad crossing sign, and Thomas and a musical caboose for $36 so I got that. Of course as we were leaving and I had to take the two trains from William's hands he threw a fit and I had to show him what I was getting him.

Opened it up in the car and he was very happy. He has been nearly inseparable from them. This morning he had the caboose in his hands and I was busy trying to use the bathroom and he was bugging me, handing me the box the set came in and making a noise that's a bit of a question. Pretty much he was asking me to open the box and take something out. I kept telling him there was nothing in it but he kept at it. Finally, when I was done, I figured maybe he wants Thomas since he's only got the caboose. So I told him I'd go get Thomas. When I handed it to him I said, "Here you go. Here's Thomas." To that he replied. "Tho-mas?" And I laughed very happily and said, "Yes! Thomas! You love Thomas, don't you?"

It was very clear. I'm still excited about it! So now he says his daycare worker's name, Thomas, What's That, and then he says two different forms of mama. One seems to have a very forced ah sound and the other seems to be more like muhmuh. The forced one is for me but he doesn't use it nearly enough for me to be completely sure, but he's starting to use it more and more. And the other pretty much means food. Any type of food he sees and wants he'll say muhmuh, including when it comes to see my boobs -_-' While he doesn't nurse anymore (all he does is sometimes does a quick suck and then that's it) he still knows they're meant for food and will pull at my shirt saying muhmuh? muhmuh? and try to pull one of my boobs out.

So he's coming along a lot better than I thought. His language development had me worried a bit because he just wasn't saying mama. But I think he was sometimes and I just didn't realize it. And he definitely knows things.

When I ask him if he's hungry or if he wants to eat he goes to his high chair. Still haven't gotten him to understand what bath means, though he loves them. It's so amazing watching him grow and learn. I really need to do more with him in terms of teaching him his numbers, letters, shapes, and colors, though. I feel like I'm seriously lacking in that. He does sometimes try to sign the alphabet with me when I sing it and sign, so there's something. But he sure is a smarty pants ^_^

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Yeah I forgot when I started this, haha. Oh well. One thing I saw today was a paper with some measurements from a few years ago. I'm not sure how long ago but it was either 2008 or later or it could have been 2004 or earlier. But pretty much I'm the same exact size now as I was when I took those measurements. One difference was my calves, I've lost a whole inch on them. That's good, haha.

Well here's today's menu:

Breakfast
-Half a serving of leftover beans with some onions and cheese
-Glass of water
-Bowl of froot loops

Lunch
-Whatever I snacked on. Some of it included some banana, a tangerine, some chips, some candy here and there. I wasn't very hungry today again.

Dinner
-Salmon (the good stuff. My sister and her husband caught this stuff a year or two ago)
-Broccoli with a little bit of cheese
-Rice
-Glass of sweet tea

Dessert
-Two homemade crepes, one with nutella and half a banana cut up on it, the other with nutella and some strawberries sliced up on it

I really need to actually eat food and stop snacking on whatever, even if it is just tiny bits. Seriously, the candy was very little. I don't know why I haven't been hungry lately. Maybe it's because I know I don't have much left on my food stamps and there's not much here but ramen, bisquick, bread, and peanut butter and jelly. William has food enough for him, though. I try not to eat the stuff I've bought for him, though I have been eating his tangerines because they seem to go bad real fast, same with the bananas. Going to grab some stuff with WIC checks tomorrow, though, not that it'll give me much of anything I can give my son except milk. I don't understand why I got 6 gallons of milk a month and he only gets about 3. He goes through them so fast and I don't give him any milk during the day except for one bottle at nap time. I've tried giving him milk in a sippy cup for the morning but he won't have anything to do with it and it just gets wasted. At night he gets a bottle for bed and he only wakes up about twice at most if he does at all so that's only two extra bottles. I give him 5oz each time, which is what I've always given him for milk, even breastmilk (no, he does not go hungry, the little porker is in perfect proportion for his height). Lately I've been giving him around 8oz for bedtime so he doesn't wake up so early for the first middle of the night waking he sometimes has.

Haha well, anyway, I think food went a bit better today. I really loved how healthy dinner was and I didn't get tons of rice. A little more than the 1/3 cup I should eat but not by much. I really need to try and have dinner like that every night. I'm thinking tomorrow will be a delicious baked chicken breast with a salad and something starchy, maybe corn or a spoonful of the leftover beans.

Well we'll see. On Monday I will weigh myself and post it here. I'm going to start trying to get some exercise in. I asked a friend of mine if she'd like to do the belly dancing DVD with me after school on Tues and Thurs and sometimes in the morning the other three days during the week. I actually meant to go do that today but completely forgot, though I will say that lugging boxes around and up and down stairs was a workout. It also made me realize how weak my stomach muscles have gotten. They've always been my strongest muscles but I guess I just allowed myself to relax too much while pregnant so my lower back was killing me after doing all the mess with these piddly boxes.

Monday, January 14, 2013

I think I could stand to get some William posts in here if I'm going to post often about my weight loss stuff.

The little man woke up good and happy this morning. I always try to get in there to get him out of his crib when he's happy but I don't always make it in time. I wish he understood about calling for me. I'm not even sure he really understands that mama is me. My sister thinks he does but that's because when he wants to eat something or drink something but it's closed up he brings it to me saying what sounds like mama, but I think it's actually mum-mum, which is a rice cracker thing. He has yet to actually call me mama and it makes me a bit sad. He can say his daycare worker's name just fine. If I had him call me by my actual name then he'd be able to call me because apparently the Z on the woman's name is supposed to be pronounced like an S so it comes out sounding like Sarah and that was his first word, his daycare worker's name -_-'

I sometimes worry about his language skills. He hears just fine but really, he can only say his daycare worker's name, mum-mum, and the other day I got him to saying pop. He's a boy of few words. He doesn't babble a lot either. He's a pretty quiet little thing when it comes to talking but he does squeal a lot and will scream at things when hes angry. If he wants something he usually just points at it. I know he understands things, though. I ask him if he wants to eat, making the sign for it as well, and if he does, he'll nod and go to his high chair. I ask him if he wants some of my water, making the sign for it, he'll nod and hold his hands out so he can hold the glass with me. He knows what a light is, I've got him knowing what his head is by singing the head, shoulders, knees, and toes song. He's a bright boy but just doesn't want to speak. I keep wondering if it's something to do with me. I speak fairly fast and I always worried that my children would have a hard time speaking because of that. I've begun reading aloud to him again, not trying to make him sit down with me, just let him play and all. The point to it being that I read slowly and carefully and he at least hears words as they're supposed to sound and at the speed they're supposed to be produced. Heh, when I say slowly, I mean slow for me. It's hard for me to slow down because I feel like I'm speaking in slow motion and it's irritating, but when I sing or read aloud so people can understand me, it comes out at a more normal pace, which, for me, is slow.

I know some children just don't want to speak much. The doula I had told me her son was like that. He could communicate just fine and he used signs when it was more difficult to show what he wanted but he did eventually get over than and begin speaking, though he still doesn't say much. I hope that's what's going on with William.

Other than that, today he was all right before his nap. Afterwards he was a bit cranky and by 5:30pm he was really working on my last nerve. At 6:30 I stuck him in the bath for the second time today and he was very happy about that. Just before he was being incredibly whiny and getting irritated with everything. After the bath he sat with me on the couch for a bit and then I put his pjs on and he was just so tired that when I accidentally knocked him over when trying to get into the kitchen he just started crying. So I didn't bother warming his milk. Just handed it to him and took him to bed. He was out in minutes. I wonder if he's having a growth spurt because he's been like that the past few days. He's just so tired that he doesn't try to stay away in his crib, he just passes right out.

Well onto weight loss stuff.

Breakfast
-Bowl of dry coco pebbles cereal

Lunch
-Nothing

Dinner
-2 Servings of beans with onions and cheese
-2 biscuits (one with butter, one with jam)
-glass of milk

I wasn't really hungry today. I did snack on some things like a few animal crackers with some peanut butter, some grapes, a tangerine, two pieces of french bread. And I had two glasses of water. Oh and a few skittles and a small piece of chocolate.